PaulTX,
I have not been hog hunting in over 30 years but I strongly suggest that along with your long gun you also carry a large caliber hand gun.
It's hard to climb a tree while carrying a long gun and if a hog trees you without a hand gun you just might get stuck up there all night.

I'm going to be carrying a Marlin 1894P - it's almost as handy as a pistol! I don't have a .357 or .44 mag pistol, so I was thinking about carrying my 9mm - not a first choice, but should have some pentatration.

PaulTX, just make sure Rob tells you about it and you don't decide to try it yourself. A boar can rip you to shreds with his tusks and if you see one coming at you, DON'T TRY TO SHOOT IT! Just run up a tree and get out of it's way.

I used to hog hunt down in the swamps of NE Texas. It is a real adrenaline rush to be on the ground about 15 yards from a Boar rooting around in the mud. If you go to www.bowhunting.net they have good hog hunting stories on there right now.

Look for trees with mud scrapes on the side which will be real close to a wallowing hole. They love that. And a boar will clean his tusks on a tree too. That's where you will get a good idea of the damage they can do.

I would think again about the 9mm. We used to hunt them with a 30/30, 00 buck, or shotgun with slugs. Those wild pigs are pretty tough and a 9mm may not have the kind of knock-down you are looking for. I've seen em take a shot of 00 buck and still not ever find them. No blood trail, nothing.

HukeOKC,
Thanks for the information. I was just going to take the 9mm as backup only, loaded with hardball. The primary weapon will be an 1894P Marlin, 44 mag, and will probably have some 305 gr. Cor-Bon pentatrators. In the Marlin that should give me somewhere around 1,700 fpe at the muzzle.

I've never been around the hogs in the wild - I've read enough to give them a great deal of respect! What if there is no tree to climb?

PaulTX, Good deal on the 9mm. I actually never carried a back-up but that was because I didn't own a good handgun at the time. I would certainly do so now though.

Art is rigth on the "no tree" deal. LMAO. You will probly trip over yourself if you try to run but you won't find many hogs in a no tree area anyways. They like to keep cool and not be out in the blistering sun. So you should have plenty or trees around you. I got winded by a boar when I was about 20 yards away and he just snorted and ran the other way full steam ahead. He hit the river so hard I thought he had knocked a tree down. Hog hunting is fun though that is for sure and the meat is so lean it's truly worth it. My step-dad told me that the Boar meat down in our area was so nasty that there was no need to take them. We just hunted for sows. I have heard of lots of hunters taking boars though so it may have just been in my area. I don't know. You probly should ask someone in the area where you will be hunting.

Will you be hunting with dogs or anything. We had a blue tick that we thought was retarded. We tried to work with him but all he wanted to do was tackle you and lick you to death. My step-dad gave him to a hog hunter and he turneed out to be the best hog-dog in the area. He was suddenly worth quite a bit of money and the new owner wouldn't take a penny for him. I was glad for the dog though, When I left he was kept on a chain all the time. My step-dad had no idea what he was doing.

Unfortunately I don't anticipate we'll have any dogs, it would be a lot of fun to work with them.

I've never had wild hog meat, so it will be a new experience if and when I get one of the suckers in my pot.

Okay Art, I'll make sure there is "kick" in between lever actuations! If my first hog is very close when I see him, I may be shooting my Marlin like those guys do at the cowboy competitions (ie. like a semi-auto).

I just got back from the range where I shot the Marlin 1894P again and chronoed a few more loads. A 44 in a carbine is very impressive! If a hog can stand up to one of these well placed rounds, I don't think I'll get past "Our Father. . "! :-) The recoil on the Marlin is quite pleasant. You know you're shooting something, but you can shoot 20-30 rounds with no soreness at all.

My Granddad used to raise and train birddogs. Unfortunately I came along later in my parent's life and missed out on some mighty fine quail hunting in Arkansas.

ArmySon, you can regard hog hunting as a sport, and it can be as difficult and fair-chase as any other type of hunting.

Given how many wild hogs there are running loose, it is equally legitimate to merely harvest one for its meat, regardless of method. Remember, for many farmers and ranchers, they are nothing more than incredibly destructive pests.

They tear up fences, and will kill lambs and kids. (For the city-slickers who've stumbled in here, a kid is a baby goat.) It doesn't take a large bunch to really tear up a cornfield in one or two nights.

Back in the late 1960s and in the 1970s, more than one rancher of the general area around Leakey, Texas, set trip-wire dynamite traps at known hogs' fence-crossings. This was occasionally a bit rough on coyotes and javelinas...

BadMedicine, sheep and goat fence is four-foot high mesh wire, with one or more strands of barbed wire on top. The crossings are underneath, where the hogs have rooted out a little washed-out spot. I have even seen deer use them.

One year on our deer lease, a trapper caught a young four-point in a snare at one of these "crawl-unders". A buddy of mine and I tied the deer's feet, undid him from the snare, tossed him in the back of the truck, and hauled him to camp. "Well, whadja find?", someone asked. "A little buck." "Where is he?" "Right here," I said as I undid the calf-roping-style clove hitch and let the deer leap into the group...Deer camp is fun!

Art,
Now I would definately pay to see that! Thanks, now when I'm sittin in my deerstand this year I just know I'm gonna try and figure out how to get a live one back to camp - we've got a whole pack of jokers, but that would take the cake.

Art, despite what the picture from Texas said (don't know who was trying to pull this one off!) the Texas state record for a feral hog is 375 pounds. If those two hogs that you are referring to were REALLY that big (549 and 450 pounds) and documented in a photo, how come they were never validated as a state record holder? Anyways, if you have ever seen a 375 boar, it is HUGE! The ones I have seen are only around 200 pounds and they will still pucker your arse!

Hope this doesn't get you riled up, ArmySon, as you seem to have a definite idea of what hunting should be, but lots of meat hunters (like me) down here in Texas shoot game from stands overlooking feeders. I know some folks consider this to be slob hunting, but it makes for good game management and herd thinning. Game is larger and healthier.

Also- you likely wouldn't be able to stand the smell of the meat from that 450 lb hog. I wouldn't shoot one for meat that ran more than 125 lbs. The rule I usually follow is the hog should be no more than knee high at the shoulder. What I do is check out a few prickly pear clusters in my stand area for calibration to knee height. Works for me. I've found a nice little deer gut pile will draw hogs in like a charm, but you need to keep your eyes open for predators.

BMiracle, the photos were probably from before folks worried about records. It was in the earliest days of some then-new hog-hunting society; sometime back in the '70s...I saw the photos in an ad in a newsletter-type hog-hunting magazine. The big one certainly looked like it could go well over any 400 pounds; I didn't question the claim to 549. (The odd-ball number just stuck in my mind, mostly because this sow outweighed the boar.)

Lone Star: Position yourself in a tree stand so that if a deer walks underneath you, you can just jump on him and catch him! Just like calf-roping, but the deer is lighter! Oh, er, ah, where's y'all's camp?

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